But.....then they drop a big bad dumb decision here - attack penalties. *ugh* Seriously I was HOPING we were done with these. Nothing bogs down combat more than rolling 3 d20's then trying to figure out which one the -2 , -4 , -6 etc applies to. It's dumb, overly penalizing to weapon-based classes, and has zero narrative reasoning behind it. This decision seriously makes me even consider playing the game it's THAT bad.

-Do people not roll one action/attack/whatever at a time? I've never once in my life made multiple action/attack/whatever rolls at the same time. It seems so counter-intuitive for the exact reason you just mentioned.

(A Tri-Partite Arcanist Who Has Forgotten More Than Most Will Ever Know)

But.....then they drop a big bad dumb decision here - attack penalties. *ugh* Seriously I was HOPING we were done with these. Nothing bogs down combat more than rolling 3 d20's then trying to figure out which one the -2 , -4 , -6 etc applies to. It's dumb, overly penalizing to weapon-based classes, and has zero narrative reasoning behind it. This decision seriously makes me even consider playing the game it's THAT bad.

-Do people not roll one action/attack/whatever at a time? I've never once in my life made multiple action/attack/whatever rolls at the same time. It seems so counter-intuitive for the exact reason you just mentioned.

People do it all the time. They usually designate by color of dice (i.e. blue is the first, red the second, purple the third, etc...), write it down somewhere and just stick to it. Its a big time saver.

But.....then they drop a big bad dumb decision here - attack penalties. *ugh* Seriously I was HOPING we were done with these. Nothing bogs down combat more than rolling 3 d20's then trying to figure out which one the -2 , -4 , -6 etc applies to. It's dumb, overly penalizing to weapon-based classes, and has zero narrative reasoning behind it. This decision seriously makes me even consider playing the game it's THAT bad.

-Do people not roll one action/attack/whatever at a time? I've never once in my life made multiple action/attack/whatever rolls at the same time. It seems so counter-intuitive for the exact reason you just mentioned.

For me I roll all at once because its easier but it also requires 4-7 different colored d20's. I personally don't like that, especially because I then have to mix/match the modifiers to the rolls per die. It's not terrible, but certainly annoying and I'd like to try to lessen annoying things.

Also I worry if they're going to keep the dumb 5-ft. step / full-attack matrix. A 1e Pathfinder Wizard can Gate in an entire Angelic host in 6 seconds but a highly trained Fighter can't get two attacks if he moves more than 5 ft??? *sigh*

4E Realms = Great Taste, Less Filling.

"If WotC were to put out a box of free money, people would still complain how it was folded."

In nearly all systems I roll one at a time, because the result of the first attack can have immediate effect (crit? then the next attacks will have to find new targets) on the battlefield.

The 5 ft step is back in the form of a Step action, which is a slight movement that prevents reactions from triggering.

This nicely replaces the withdraw action as well, as a combatant can step out of reach with his first action, and use the following two actions that round to move away or around.

Movement and AoO's are also overhauled quite a bit with humans base speed being 25ft (elves get 30 while dwarves, halflings and gnomes get 20ft), making combat strides in melee a lot easier to perform and more of a gamble: its probably better to take the risk of the reaction of your goblin archer foe and reach and engage the bugbear then to stick to the archer and let the bugbear outflank your party.